


Back to Basics

by The_Buzz



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And Sorcerers, Angst with a Happy Ending, De-Serumed Steve Rogers, Fighting bad guys, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Steve Rogers, Original Avengers Team Bonding, Pre-Age of Ultron, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Skinny Steve, Some Team Whump, Steve Feels, Steve Rogers Angst, Steve Rogers-centric, Team Feels, Team as Family, Terrible Comic Book Science, brief mention of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 22:05:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9404855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Buzz/pseuds/The_Buzz
Summary: When Steve is hit by a spell that takes away the effects of the serum, he's worried that he won't be useful again.Written for the prompt: De-serumed Steve with protective teammates.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RavenclawAngel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenclawAngel/gifts).



It happened at the worst time. They were fighting sorcerers, of all things, a rogue cell of them that was hell-bent on turning Philadelphia inside out. Or something. Steve had listened patiently to Hill’s briefing but when it came down to it, all that really mattered was that people’s lives were at stake. As such, Steve and the other Avengers had been engaged in a grueling battle for more than four hours trying to take them down. 

Stark was above, somewhere, one repulsor already smashed and useless. Barton was on fire escape, dispensing arrow after arrow, Romanov a level below him, using her widow’s bites for all they were worth. Banner had been  de-Hulked by a blast of the a sorcerer’s power and nestled in the rubble somewhere. Thor still nowhere to be seen, though they’d sent him the call that morning. Steve, for his part, had been slinging his shield for all he was worth.

It wasn't making any difference at all. 

Then an errant bolt of energy came out of nowhere and hit Steve directly in the chest, throwing him into the wall behind him with force enough to crack the bricks.

It was also enough to disorient him for a minute, as if he'd lost sense of his own body, what was up or down and where he wanted to be.

The worst of the dizziness passed quickly, replaced by sharp pain in his head and chest where they’d slammed into the wall. He recognized the sharp ache of cracked or broken ribs, and his chest felt tight. He hoped distantly he hadn’t collapsed a lung, since it would be very inconvenient at this point in the fight. His friends needed him. Steeling himself to ignore the pain and the way the world was still lurching, Steve shoved himself up to his feet.

Except, _up_ didn’t get him very far. Steve stared down at himself, at a narrow chest and spindly limbs and small, delicate hands.

His uniform was absurdly large on his small frame. He was swimming in his boots. He swore under his breath and stooped to cuff the sleeves and pants. His damaged ribs spasmed in pain and then he couldn’t breathe at all, a coughing fit robbing him of breath and making him see stars. By the time he straightened up again he was wheezing.

He hadn’t collapsed a lung. He’d just forgotten how hard it had been to breathe. 

Finally, he staggered to his feet. His shield was on the ground a few feet away but he could barely lift it, his arms trembling under the weight and his ribs singing in pain and threatening to send him into another coughing fit he couldn't afford.

He look up just in time to see Stark get hit by something and go careening off course, hit the ground, and go still. Barton sent an arrow through the sorcerer who had done it, but another one picked him up easily from behind. Romanov took an impressive flying leap onto Barton’s fire escape and hit the sorcerer with her widow’s bite, but then the two were surrounded.

There was nothing Steve could do.

In his serum-enhanced form, he could have made it up to the fire-escape in a few well-planned leaps. He could have thrown his shield and distracted the sorcerers so Barton and Romanov could get the upper hand. But now… there was nothing he could do.

“No,” he said breathlessly.

A sorcerer reared back to throw a crackling burst of energy at Barton—but just as he let loose, there was an ear-splitting crack of thunder and the sorcerer dissolved in pillar of crackling light.

Thor descended slowly from the spinning clouds, his cape fluttering behind him. The rest of the fight didn’t last long. Within minutes, the rest were either smoking holes in the ground or long gone.

A hand rested on Steve’s shoulder and he jumped, because Thor was still hovering in the air, the shiny red of Stark's armor was visible a block away and neither Barton nor Romanov had come down from the roof.

“Easy, Cap,” Banner said mildly. He was covered in concrete-colored dust, holding up what was left of his pants with one hand, and he looked exhausted, but what struck Steve most was that he was looking _up_ at the scientist’s face. “I take it they, ah, got you?” Banner added, gesturing at Steve’s small stature.

Steve nodded, both surprised and mildly grateful that Bruce was taking his de-seruming in stride when Steve was on the verge of panicking for the first time in a long time. “It was some kind of energy blast.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Banner said. Now he was staring at Steve with an odd expression, and it made Steve feel an acute jolt of discomfort. Since getting the serum, Steve had been on the receiving end of plenty of curious stares, but they’d all been missing what Banner’s gaze held now. Something that looked a whole lot like pity.

“Were you hurt? Otherwise?” Banner asked.

Steve hesitated. On any other day, a couple of cracked or broken ribs would heal within hours. Hardly worth a mention, definitely not worth a trip to the infirmary.

Now, each breath was stabbing pain and he could feel another cough building in his chest with each shallow inhale.

Once in his childhood, Steve and some other neighborhood kids had climbed a tree and jumped from to see who could cling to the highest point on a nearby fence. (It had been Brooklyn, where the fences outnumbered the trees.) Bucky had won. Steve had missed entirely and landed hard on the pavement, breaking a single rib. Not only had it taken forever to heal, but it had complicated his asthma and that winter’s bout of bronchitis, nearly costing him his life and worrying Bucky and his ma half to death.

“Cracked a few ribs,” he said as nonchalantly as he could. “Other than that, uh, hit my head. But I don’t think I have a concussion.”

Banner took that in stride, too. “Stay here,” Banner said. “There should be emergency personnel around here somewhere. I’ll send someone your way.”

“I saw Stark hit the ground pretty hard,” Steve said, pointing to the glint of red and gold down the wrecked street, though the movement made his ribs spark with pain. “I think he needs more help than I do.”

“Noted.” Banner’s gaze was still full of sympathy, but he turned quickly to squint down the street at Stark's fallen form, then took off at a trot, mindless of the rubble littering the street under his bare feet.

Steve sank down against a short brick wall lining the sidewalk, wrapped his thin arms around his chest, and waited.

* * *

The atmosphere on the on the Quinjet ride home was subdued. Everyone’s injuries had been relatively minor, considering the rigor of the fight—Stark was nursing a concussion, Barton had sprained an ankle, and Natasha had a wide sword slash across her ribs—but no one felt particularly good about what had happened. If Thor hadn’t shown up, they would have lost, and they all knew it. 

No one was saying it, but Steve couldn’t shake the feeling that if it had gone that way, it would have been because _he_ had lost everything that had allowed him to be a good soldier and a good Avenger.

It was funny, really. Before the serum, he hadn't thought twice about cheating his way into the army, weak asthmatic body or no. Now, he understood that that dogged ignorance of that reality had been naïve at best and selfish at worst, because if he had made it onto the battlefield he’d have been putting every other soldier at risk.

Clint and Natasha had almost been killed and he'd been powerless to do a damn thing about it. 

Stark, in true Stark fashion, asked the obvious question in the crassest way: “So, Cap. Can’t say I like the new look. How are we gonna beefcake you up again?”

He was sitting on the seat opposite Steve, his helmet off. Both hands had been cupped gently around his temples, but he freed one briefly one to gesture vaguely at Steve to indicate _the new look_.

Everyone looked at Steve.

“I don’t know," Steve said. "No one’s ever been able to replicate Erskine’s original formula.”

“No, we’re definitely not going down that road,” Bruce said in a low voice. He was wrapped in a blanket a few seats over.

Steve looked down, ashamed at having given so little thought to how Banner’s condition had come about.

“Who says we need the formula?” Romanov said, giving Steve one of her patented clear, expressionless gazes. “A sorcerer did this to you. A sorcerer could reverse it.”

“Yeah, ‘cause we’re friends with plenty of those,” Stark said irritably, rubbing his forehead.

“Who said anything about being friends?” Barton countered, glancing at Romanov and fingering his bow.

“Yeah, sure, threaten someone who can kick our asses with  _magic_ ,” Tony said. “I’m sure that would go well and not blow up in our faces in any way.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” Romanov asked.

“Course he doesn’t,” Barton said.

“Cool it, both of you,” Steve said sharply, then had to fold over for another bout of extremely painful coughs. Everyone stared at him again, their faces softening in concern. Both Stark and Barton shut their mouths, but Steve could tell that it hadn’t had a damn thing to do with his commanding tone. 

Another memory of Brooklyn surfaced through the pain. While other children had seen Steve’s weakness and preyed on him or looked at him like he was a pitiful wreck, Bucky had always treated him with respect. As a peer. As an equal. That was why Steve had liked him so much when they'd first met, back in the second grade.

There was no way his team would see him as an equal now. There was no way they could respect him when he was useless to the team. Maybe they would resent him, but more likely, they would only see poor, sickly, little Steve Rogers, a man to be pitied. The thought made him want to be sick. 

“Captain,” Thor said quietly, when the silence had stretched out for a while. “The magic of an earthly sorcerer may not be the only answer. I shall return to Asgard, and seek another solution. Asgardian magic can do many wondrous things.”

No one had ever been able to replicate, or even approximate, the serum. It was hard to believe that any kind of answer lay in Asgard's dusty libraries. 

Still, Steve had never been one to let that kind of pessimism show.

“That would be great, Thor,” he said, and forced a smile. “Thank you.”

It would be better, he thought, if he didn't get his hopes up. 


	2. Chapter 2

Before Thor left, he came to find Steve in his quarters. Given the… unusualness of his situation, Stark had offered Steve an apartment in the tower, and Steve had taken it. Perhaps concerned that Steve wouldn’t be able to handle himself if a threat arose, Natasha and Clint had also elected to stick around until they figured out a solution. (Or, what went unsaid, until they discovered there was nothing that could be done.)

Steve was pulling off his undershirt gingerly when Thor knocked, planning to take a long, steaming shower that might hopefully ease the sharp ache in his battered ribs and the whistle in his chest. The knock on the door startled him, and he let his shirt fall back down to cover the extensive bruising. The EMTs had confirmed what he'd suspected, broken ribs, and sent him away with instructions to get checked out at a hospital the next day.

He wasn’t sure who he had been expecting on the other side of the door, but it certainly hadn’t been Thor.

“May I come in?” Thor asked.

Steve looked up him, paralyzed briefly by the thought that not so long ago he had been almost as tall as the demigod, before remembering his manners and stepping aside. “Of course.”

Thor must have seen Steve’s poorly suppressed wince from attempting to both talk and move at the same time, for he said, "How do you fare?”

A little embarrassed, Steve carefully smoothed out his features and said, “I’m all right. My ribs will heal. Eventually.”

“I am glad to hear that,” Thor said, sounding genuinely glad to hear it.

Steve gave him a pale smile in response.

“However,” Thor went on, “I was actually asking about the other, er, effects."

“I’m fine,” Steve said automatically, his smile fading. Here came the pity again.

Thor regarded him shrewdly for a moment. Steve squirmed slightly under the gaze. 

 “I lost my strength once,” Thor said.

Steve nodded, repressing a sigh. “When you first came here. I read SHIELD's report."

“I fell to the earth without Mjolnir or even a semblance of my old power," Thor said. "I was breakable, truly, for perhaps the first time in my life.”

He paused, and Steve supposed he was supposed to say something. He forced the smile back onto his face. “It’s not like that. I was this size for most of my life. Even if we can’t find a way to change me back, I’ll get used to it again.”

Thor placed a large hand on Steve’s shoulder and gripped it gently. “I am envious of your attitude. I did not handle my own transformation nearly so well. You are a strong man indeed." He stepped back and returned Steve’s pale smile with a wide grin of his own. “I shall search the farthest depths of Asgardian magic, and return in a fortnight. Fear not. I'm sure something will turn up.”

"Um, thanks," Steve said.

As the door shut behind Thor, Steve blinked. He'd expected pity, but what he'd gotten, well. That had been something else.

He pulled off his shirt, wincing at the motion, and gingerly ran his fingers along the bruises on his side. Thor thought he was a strong man indeed. 

* * *

A good night’s sleep had been the cure for everything when the serum had been pumping through his veins.

For a blissful moment of post-sleep amnesia, Steve was sure that everything was going to be just fine. That new-day sense of optimism seeped away, however, as soon as the memory of the fight returned. He was still small. Pain shattered across his chest with every tight breath. His head didn’t hurt quite as much as it had the day before, but all the minor strains, cuts and bruises that would have been long gone after any other fight had stiffened painfully overnight.

He ignored the pain and sat up, gripping the edge of the thick Stark Tower mattress and gritting his teeth. It passed, leaving him bowing his head and gritted his teeth. Standing was another exercise in pain management, and by the time he’d relieved himself, brushed his teeth, and pulled on a small T-shirt pair of sweatpants (apparently stocked in the room by Stark the night before), Steve had to admit that he wasn’t going to get through the day without something to take the edge off. Or rather, he couldn’t do it comfortably, and his shallow breathing would probably aggravate his asthma or put him at risk for something worse.

The Stark Tower had an infirmary wing. Steve had visited it a few times during his tenure as an Avenger, usually so that Stark’s private doctor—or Bruce, if Stark hadn’t called the doctor in—could set a bone or do whatever else had to be done to ensure that he would heal right. It would most likely be empty now, which was perfect. He didn’t need anyone seeing him downing pain pills for an injury he could have shrugged off without a thought the day before.

He took the elevator down to the 34th floor, where the infirmary was situated, and managed to make it there without running into anyone in the halls. He was about to breath a shallow sigh of relief when he realized—the infirmary was already occupied.

Clint was sitting on the padded infirmary table with his legs outstretched, while Natasha was bending over to examine his ankle. They both looked confused when Steve walked in, though their faces both shifted quickly to more-or-less friendly smiles.

“Cap!” Clint said. “Don’t usually see you in here the next day.”

Natasha gave him a mildly scathing look, as if she understood that Steve wouldn’t want attention drawn to that fact.

“…What are you doing here?” Steve asked. “I thought the EMTs got to you yesterday.”

“They did,” Clint said. “Can’t hurt to let Nat give it a once-over today, though. You’d be surprised at what they can miss.”

“We’ve always taken care of our own,” Natasha added.

“Yeah, got into the habit,” Clint said. “EMTs always say you should go see medical…go to the hospital,” he amended. “Back in the SHIELD days, we started patching each other up to try to stay out of medical—they’d pull agents for freaking papercuts. Course, now it’s up to me to pull me from field duty, but still. Rather not go to the hospital if I can avoid it.”

“And now?” Steve asked curiously, nodding at Clint’s outstretched leg.

“It’s just a sprain,” Natasha said.

Steve nodded, not quite sure what to do with himself. The ex-agents were obviously very comfortable with what was going on, a fact that made something _uncomfortable_ squirm in him. “How often does this happen?”

As the leader of the team, it was Steve’s prerogative to know what kind of shape his people were in. But he’d always assumed that if the two assassins walked away from a fight, that they were fine. Stupidly, it had never occurred to him that his very-human teammates might not always come away as unscathed as they pretended. If he ever did get the serum back, he’d have to be much more careful with them.

Clint was squinting suspiciously at him now. “It’s okay, Cap. We’ve got it under control. It’s be dumb to go into a fight injured, we know that.”

“So, pretty often, then,” Steve interpreted.

Clint looked flustered. Natasha just asked calmly, “What brings you down here, Steve?”

“I, ah,” Steve fumbled, his cheeks feeling hot as he remembered why he’d come.

“I can take a look at your ribs, if you’d like,” Natasha said. “As soon as I’m done with Clint’s leg. The place is pretty well-stocked with pain medication too—we also have plenty of experience there.”

As embarrassed as he’d been, Steve felt himself relaxing a little bit at the frankness of her tone. As if injury and human frailty were totally normal things—nothing to be ashamed of, just a part of their lives and now a part of his.

“I’d appreciate that,” Steve said.

And, a few minutes later, when Clint was leaning on his crutches off to the side and Steve was on the table, his shirt pulled up to his armpits to expose the massive bruise that was his right side, he was a little shocked to realize that neither of them seemed to be pitying him either.

* * *

A few hours later, Steve was sitting in a puffy chair in one of the Tower’s many rarely-used common rooms, sketching bits of Brooklyn as he remembered it to pass the time. The activity took enough of his concentration that it allowed his mind to ponder his situation without falling into any particularly deep pits of panic. He thought about what he would do if Thor failed to turn up a counter-spell. Medical care was much better in this decade, of course, so chances were he would survive long enough to have to do something with himself. Being Captain America was out of the question, but there might be other roles he could fill, holes left by SHIELD’s collapse. Or maybe he’d have to strike out on his own. He had almost no skills relevant to the twenty-first century, but he could probably leverage his fame and tactical skills to find something. He supposed that Stark would probably offer to keep him, but he already planned to turn that down. He hadn’t relied on charity before and he wasn’t about to start.

“Excuse me, Mr. Rogers,” JARVIS’s voice sounded pleasantly from above, making Steve look up in surprised from his latest sketch—a spot he’d always liked in Prospect Park.

“What is it?” Steve asked the ceiling.

“Doctor Banner requests your presence in the floor 73 laboratory.”

“What for?” Steve asked, setting aside his half-finished drawing.

“He did not say,” JARVIS politely informed him.

“Tell him I’m on my way.”

Getting to his feet wasn’t much less painful than it had been a few hours ago, but Steve gritted his teeth pushed himself up. He made his way gingerly to the elevator, and forced away the thought that normally, he would be not only healed but back at the gym or in the sparring ring by now. Thoughts like those were unproductive at best.

Banner greeted him with a pale smile when he entered the lab. Like Tony’s labs, it was stocked with dozens of complicated machines, none of which Steve understood in any capacity.

“You called?” he said.

“Uh, yeah,” Bruce said, beckoning Steve forward. “How’re the ribs?”

“They’re okay,” Steve lied shortly, fairly sure this was not what Banner had called him down for.

“I need a sample of your blood,” Banner said, apparently having exhausted his small talk. “I mean. I’d like to run a few tests. It occurred to me that the serum might simply be repressed, not gone. I’ve run a few simulations that suggest that’s a possibility, but I need a sample of your blood to be sure.”

“Of course,” Steve said, offering him an arm. “You could have asked sooner.”

Bruce shrugged before taking Steve’s arm and swabbing the skin in the crook of his elbow with alcohol. “Wasn’t sure it would work. I didn’t want to bother you.”

Steve fell silent. Banner slid a needle into his arm and filled up one vial, two, three. Steve watched with mild interest as Banner placed them carefully in a small refrigerator then covered the small wound in his arm with a cotton pad and gauze. Then a question occurred to him.

“I thought you said last night you were done working with the serum.”

Banner’s expression froze for a millisecond, before his practiced aura of calm took over. “Well, I’m not trying to recreate it. I just want to see if it’s still there. I might be able to unlock it without having to worry about…well, any unwanted side effects.” He looked down at himself with a self-deprecating smirk.

For all that Bruce’s discomfort with the topic was evident, Steve couldn’t help but ask, “The first time. Did you have any idea what could happen?”

This time, the frozen expression lasted a little longer. “Specifically, no.”

“Not specifically?” Steve asked.

“I knew it could go wrong. I did it anyway. Is that what you wanted to know?”

A little ashamed that that had been more or less what he’d wanted to know, Steve nodded. “Why did you do it, then?”

Banner let out a  soft sigh. “You really want to know?”

“I do,” Steve said.

“I, ah…” Bruce pulled off his glasses and fidgeted, staring at the floor. He seemed to be searching for the right words. Clearly, this wasn’t a topic he’d broached with many people.

“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business,” Steve said quickly.

“It’s all right,” Banner said, looking up. The mask of calm had returned. “I don’t know if you read my file, or how much you know about my life before all of this.” His jaw clenched minutely. “I came from an abusive home. A bad one. I spent a lot of my childhood being vulnerable. Unable to protect myself—let alone anyone else. When the chance to make myself into something less vulnerable… I guess something in me just wanted to take it. Consequences be damned.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said again, his brow furrowing in sympathy. “That must have been hard.”

Bruce smirked slightly. Barely a smile. “I only told you that because I’m pretty sure you understand the feeling.”

Steve frowned, and looked down at his narrow chest and legs, his smallness evident even through the baggy shirt and sweatpants he was wearing. Growing up, it had never really occurred to him how vulnerable he was—sure, he’d known he was smaller, but there had always been some part of him that was sure he could win any fight. But now…

“I do,” he said simply.

“For what it’s worth,” Banner said mildly, “I know it’s just about the worst feeling in the world.”

Steve shrugged slightly, though the movement jarred his ribs and made him wince. “It’s not so bad.”

Banner’s eyes met his, but instead of the pity he’d been expecting, he only saw understanding.

Then Bruce turned back to the blood samples. “I should know if the serum was repressed or something else within a day or two. I’ll call you when I’ve run the analyses.”

“Thanks,” Steve said.

He stood, his breath catching as the pain in his chest rocketed up again. _Vulnerable_ sure was one word for it. Still, though it was clear that Bruce had caught his moment of pain, Steve was surprised to find that it didn’t bother him so much. Bruce understood.

* * *

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Steve returned to his sketchbook for a few hours, then caught up on some reading he hadn’t had the time for between back-to-back Avengers missions and training and a million other little things that had eaten up the day.

His stomach started growling around half-past six, and he wandered into the nearest kitchen to make himself something to eat. It was raining outside, thunder—not Thor’s—rumbling in the background.

The room was already occupied.

“Hey, Cap,” Tony said. He was sitting at the round table in the middle of the room, a bottle of amber liquid sitting in front of him. From the way he’d slurred his greeting slightly, it seemed he’d already polished off quite a bit.

“Hi, Tony,” Steve said, pulling out the materials to make a turkey sandwich and setting them on the counter. His ribs complained but he was growing used to the pain. It didn’t bother him as much as it had before.

“Care to join?” Stark asked, raising the bottle as if it hadn’t been clear what activity he was inviting Steve to take part in.

Steve snorted softly. “I can’t. I’m on pain medication.”

 “What, and you think I’m not? Dulls the pain,” Tony said, gesturing at his head. “Come on. You haven’t had anything to drink since before Hawaii was a state. It’s just sad.”

He stared up at Steve, giving him a puppy-eyed stare.

“All right,” Steve said after a moment. It seemed, for whatever reason, like it would make Stark very happy… and what the hell. The day had been a real doozer.

Tony’s face cracked into a grin, and he immediately grabbed a tumbler from a cabinet by his knee and poured Steve a drink.

Steve pointedly finished making his sandwich, but sat down across from him when he was done and accepted the glass when Stark pushed it across the table.

“I hate sorcerers, don’t you?” Tony said.

Steve’s eyebrows went up. “After yesterday I can’t say they’re my favorite of our villains.”

“I hate magic. Gods. All of it,” Stark went on, staring darkly into his glass. The thunder rolled again and a flash of lightning illuminated the rain-splattered window beside them.

“Are you all right?” Steve asked. He bit into his sandwich, a little bemused by Stark but enjoying the sound of the rain and the thunder. It reminded him of simpler times.

“Fine,” Stark said, drinking again. “Just miss the days when the worst things I ever had to fight were _people_. God, after New York, I—”

He broke off and didn’t say anything until Steve prompted him, “Stark?”

Stark turned on him, his original train of through abandoned. “It must suck, doesn’t it? There you were, all jumbo-sized and in charge, and all it took was one hit to turn you into Tiny Tim. There goes everything, right?”

Steve set his tumbler down, most of the liquid untouched. His voice came out taught and more than a little annoyed. “What exactly are you saying?”

“You. Situation. Sucks,” Tony summarized snappily. “Feel bad for you, really. Having control of everything in your life, then seeing it ripped away from you like that and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Suddenly, Steve didn’t feel particularly hungry anymore, nor was he especially enjoying the sounds of the rainstorm. He stood, pushing his chair back with a slight squeak and picked up his plate to put his mostly unfinished dinner back in the fridge. (Even now, he couldn’t throw away food in good conscience—a perk of having grown up in the Great Depression.)

“Goodnight, Stark,” he said coldly.

Stark’s brows drew together in confusion. “What? I’m commiserating with you here. Thought that was what friends were for.”

“It’s not commiserating when it’s you telling me how pathetic I am,” Steve said with enough force that he almost started coughing. It only made him angrier.

Tony’s face fell, as if he honestly hadn’t thought of that. He studied Steve’s face a few seconds before saying in a low voice, “I wasn’t just talking about you. It’s my worst nightmare—losing control of everything like that. Only happened once before and, God… never again.”

“Oh,” Steve said, his anger melting away at the sincerity of Stark’s confession. Presumably, he meant Afghanistan, and Steve could only imagine what that loss of control must have felt like. He took his seat again and offered a conciliatory smile. “I guess that’s something we have in common—we both like to call the shots.”

“Yeah,” Stark agreed, gazing into his glass again. “And, did I mention I hate magic, gods, and monsters?”

“You did,” Steve said with a soft snort. “You know, I think Thor might take offense—“

In an instant, the room plunged into darkness, cutting off Steve’s thought in an instant.

For all he’d had to drink, Stark was immediately on his feet, his chair scraping out behind him. “JARVIS? _JARVIS_?”

No answer.

“Shit,” Tony said, bringing up a display on his watch and thumbing through it furiously.

“What is it? Did the storm knock the power out?” Steve asked, though he doubted that would have Tony so concerned. Steve stood as well, though he was acutely aware of how little he could do to help with whatever problem had arose. God, he hated being helpless.

“We’ve got company,” Stark said tightly.  

“Sorcerers?” Steve guessed. They hadn’t been able to catch those that had fled from Thor’s attack, and now, with Thor in Asgard for as much as two weeks…

“Yep,” Tony said, “and somehow I don’t think they came back to thank us.”

“No,” Steve agreed, as the thunder cracked and the lightning flashed again, illuminating a pair of shadowy, cloaked figures making their way silently across the room toward them. “I don’t think they did.”


	3. Chapter 3

Tony waved his arms in a violent, confusing motion, and Steve spent about half a second wondering if the man had lost his mind or perhaps had a bit more to drink than he’d let on—before pieces of the Iron man armor came bursting through the door one by one and clamping themselves around him. Within seconds he was covered. In a fluid motion, he shoved Steve behind him and fired off several repulsor blasts at the approaching figures. Dim red emergency lights came on.

Though the bright energy of a spell exploded just to the right of their heads as Tony fired, the blasts seemed to stall them a moment. Tony grabbed Steve around the waist and heaved him up—Steve groaning involuntarily as his broken ribs screamed with pain—then jetted through the open door, made a sharp turn in the hall. He paused for just a second to pry open an elevator shaft then jumped in, jetting upward and pulling Steve roughly along. The sounds of the thunderstorm pounding outside faded into a strange stillness inside the shaft.

Steve clung to the outside of the armor, frustrated anew at his helplessness, his uselessness. For all he had been weak before, he had never been… such a damsel in distress. There was probably some more politically correct, twenty-first century way of putting it, but tucked against Tony, arms wrapped around his neck, it was hard to put the image out of his mind.

Tony muttered muffled words as they ascended and it only registered that he’d been counting down floors when he stopped abruptly and said, “Seventy-three. Bruce should still be here.”

A moment later, the doors were open and they were jetting down the hall, Steve still embarrassingly enclosed in Iron Man’s embrace. The hall was bathed in the red of the dim emergency lighting, but Tony seemed to know exactly where he was going, zig-zagging through the corridors with impressive alacrity for someone who was as intoxicated as Steve knew him to be.

They reached the lab doors just as two dim, black-clad figures appeared around the closer corner. Tony spun and raised his repulsor, ready to fire.

“Stark!” Steve said, pulling on his hand.

His physical efforts did nothing but Tony paused long enough to drop his hand and say, “Shit.”

Barton and Romanov were coming toward them, both armed. Barton was limping heavily but had left hi crutches behind.

“Jesus,” Clint said as they got within earshot. “Watch where you point that thing, huh?”

Natasha’s eyes raked over Steve’s compromised position, something almost like a smile playing on her lips, and Steve grunted, “Tony. You can put me down now.”

Tony didn’t bother to respond, but dropped him on the floor and turned to the control panel for the lab door, inputting a code that the machinery seemed to recognize. The door opened with a hiss.

“Come on, don’t have all day,” Tony said, ushering them in.

Banner greeted them on the inside. He looked vaguely lost and unkempt—moreso than usual—and took a few steps toward them when the door opened, then halted. The rain was still pouring against the lab’s large window.

“Heya, Brucie,” Tony said. “Sorcerers came back to finish the job. Now might be a good time for a big green episode.”

“I can’t,” Bruce said simply.

Tony’s faceplate turned to give Bruce a blank, metallic stare.

“Whatever they hit me with before,” Bruce clarified. “I can feel him in there,  but he’s… sleeping. Not coming out.”

“Bruce, they’re coming, and the Tower’s got defenses but it’s not going to take them that long to get through them. We got…minutes, tops. Now is not the time for me to find out that you can’t get it up.”

Bruce stared a second before asking, “Is he drunk?”

Wincing slightly, Steve nodded.

 Bruce sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face. “I can’t change. He’s drunk. They’re both hurt,” he indicated Natasha and Clint, before turning to Steve, “and you…” He trailed off, shaking his head as the same thing occurred to all of them. No one was in fighting shape, but they were about to have little choice.

“They’re coming,” Tony reminded everyone. Unnecessarily.

Suddenly, Steve found himself standing taller. It was as if a strange air of clarity descended upon him. He was weak, sure. Not fit to be an Avenger or a soldier or to have people’s lives relying on him. But that didn’t change the fact that there were people coming who meant his friends harm for no good reason, and who thought they were above reproach—in a word, bullies. And there were some things Steve just couldn’t stand for, no matter ill-suited he might be to the task. That had been what had drove him to enlist, and that was what was going to keep him going now.

“Bruce, when they get here, hang back. If you can find anything in this lab to use as a weapon, find it,” he said. “Stark, I want you to hold them off as long as you can at the door with the repulsors. Go for power, not precision—you might think you can aim right now but I wouldn’t count on it. Barton, Romanov, flank him, use your weapons avoid engaging them in close combat.”

“What are you going to do?” Natasha asked as everyone started moving silently into position.

“I’ll—”

_CRUNCH!_

The lab doors burst inward, the adamantium-reinfoced metal flying toward them and just barely missing Steve’s head. Had he been any taller, he might have been decapitated—and wasn’t that a thought. He didn’t have time to dwell on it, though, scrambling backward to get out of Tony and Clint and Natasha’s lines of fire.

At first it seemed the assault was working—Tony’s repulsor blasts were keeping the sorcerers from invading too far into the lab and the two assassins had both seemingly landed several hits.

It wasn’t enough. One sorcerer raised a hand and Tony went flying up to the metal ceiling hard enough to dent it, then plummeted back down and lay still. Steve knew that all of Bruce’s lab aside from the window—too small for the Hulk to squeeze out of—was reinforced with adamantium (Bruce’s request, on the off chance of a Hulk episode occurring within the lab0. But he couldn’t dwell on that. Barton and Romanov were trying to take over but it was growing more and more obvious that the sorcerers were shielded somehow, and if they could rid themselves of Iron Man so easily there was no question they could do the same to the unprotected humans.

Thor. What they really needed was Thor. The fight had gone nearly the same way last time until the Asgardian had shown up and—no. Thinking about what they didn’t have wasn’t going to help them.

Natasha went flying, crashing across a table of complicated-looking lab equipment at the same time as another peal of thunder split the sky outside.

Maybe they didn’t need _Thor_.

“Bruce!” Steve said, ducking a spell and sliding across the tile floor to where Bruce was trying to work. “Thor stopped them last time with that lightning he fires through Mjolnir.” He looked at the rain-spattered window meaningfully, hoping Bruce would catch on without him having to waste precious seconds explaining the thought.

“Lightning rod?” Bruce murmured, shaking his head. “Not gonna do it. Nothing to transfer the energy to.”

Stark was moving again, pressing himself up off the floor shakily to try to meet them. Clint fired explosive arrow after explosive arrow. It wasn’t enough.

The sorcerers were coming nearer, crossing the room at a leisurely pace. As if they knew they had already won. They flicked Barton aside like a piece of lint and he cried out as his ankle folded under him.

Stark made it to his knees, tense but unsteady. Their last line of defense, already buckling.

Then a memory returned to Steve, something he’d seen years ago, that fateful night he’d first joined the team. “The armor,” he said urgently to Bruce. “It can absorb Thor’s power and shoot it out again. You just have to get it to the armor.”

Bruce was already rooting through the scattered lab supplies. “Get that window open. I’ve already got a conductor that’ll work, I can make sure it’ll attract the lightning, I just need a minute.”

“You may not have that,” Steve said over the sound of the firing repulsors and explosions and spells. Not waiting for a reply, he grabbed  a stool from behind the lab bench—ignoring his protesting ribs—and heaved it at the window. The glass shattered with a mighty crash.

“Tony!” Bruce yelled, tossing the end of a wire at him. Tony caught the wire reflexively, but inspected it like he wasn’t sure what was happening… until Bruce brought the other end, a long metal pole shining with some added scientific contraption, and held it out the window.

A second later, lightning struck. The flash was blinding as the thunder cracked the night. Bruce screamed hoarsely as the current charged through his unprotected hands, until it turned into a roar started growing. But it had worked. Tony shook as the energy crackled all around the suit. A second later, it was discharging from his chest in a wide, brilliant beam of light that took down both sorcerers as easily as Thor himself had.

Then, aside from the continued drumming of the rain against the open window, everything was still. The Hulk crouched where Bruce had stood. Tony managed to stay on his upright about a second longer before crashing to the ground. Clint and Natasha both slumped, exhausted and hurt.

Another old memory surfaced, of a flag on a pole and a dozen soldiers who would have taken him in a fair contest any day. And Steve smiled.

* * *

“How are they doing?” Steve asked.

Steve was in Bruce’s lab, well, the backup lab he was using today, as the main lab Tony had given him was still a disaster. Before calling him to the lab, however, Bruce had spent a good part of the morning checking up on the rest of the team’s injuries from the previous night’s fight. Seeing as they had all taken a fairly hefty beating distracting the sorcerers while Steve and Bruce had worked, Steve was eager to hear that they would be all right.

“They’ll live,” Bruce said. He sounded glum—more so than usual.

Worry kicked up immediately in Steve’s stomach. “Is it Stark? I knew he got hit harder than he let on. Or Barton?”

Bruce was shaking his head. “Sorry. No. They’re fine. It’s just that… well, I got the results back. There was no sign of the serum in your blood. Repressed or otherwise. I’m sorry.”

Steve went still as he took in the news. He had wanted to be optimistic, of course, but he’d known from the start it was a long shot. It had been magic, after all, that had made the serum disappear. It had seemed unlikely that science would be the key to returning it.

“Thanks for looking into it,” he said in a voice that was only a little bit too hearty. “Maybe Thor will have something.”

“Maybe,” Bruce said. He paused for a moment like he was thinking about patting Steve on the shoulder, then didn’t.

Steve nodded his thanks again and left, trying to quash the disappointment swelling in his gut.

* * *

The next two weeks passed surprisingly quickly. After a short convalescence in the Tower, Natasha and Clint returned to… well, wherever they lived. Although Bruce and Tony made some effort to call on Steve at mealtimes, or for the occasional movie in the common room, they mostly stayed squirreled away in their respective labs, busy at work. For the most part, that left Steve to himself.

He’d thought it might have been difficult to keep himself occupied with the question of his serum looming over him, but he found that he had a good amount of time for things he’d enjoyed but rarely had the opportunity to pursue since joining the army all those years ago. Drawing. Painting. Reading. Going for leisurely walks through the city. Cooking, a little.

He also thought about what would happen if Thor didn’t come back with a solution. Unsurprisingly, over Chinese takeout one night, Tony had offered to keep him housed and fed—and when Steve’s look of consternation had been obvious, had offered him a job. Whatever he wanted to do—training Stark security if he wanted to go the Captain America route, or design, advertising, if he wanted to keep with the art. Steve told him he’d think about it.

If he were totally honest with himself, Steve wasn’t sure _what_ he wanted to do. If nothing else, the world certainly seemed to have more options than it had when he’d been nothing but a poor, sickly kid from Brooklyn.

Not that that wasn’t a perfectly fine thing to be.

Thor came back while Steve was out on his walk, and he returned to an urgent message from JARVIS—the god was in the Tower, and had “tidings” for Steve. He was waiting in the common area on the fourth floor.

Steve walked over to the elevator at a steady pace, his heart pounding in his chest despite his every attempt to not get his hopes up too high. The serum was special. Not easily replicated or restored, even by magic. Chances were, Thor wouldn’t be able to help him.

Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little lightheaded with hope as he entered the room. After two weeks of waiting, he’d finally find out if he was going to get his old life back.

“Greetings, friend Steven,” Thor said with a slight smile as he entered.

“Hi, Thor,” Steve said, then couldn’t keep from asking right away, his heart hammering away, “Did you find anything?”

He knew the answer the second Thor’s smile faded.

“I am truly sorry,” Thor said. “The sorcerers of Midgard… their magic is different. Our spells cannot restore you to your prior self.”

For a moment, Steve just nodded. For all he’d tried to rein in his hopes, the news was stunning. He was stuck like this.

“Thank you for trying,” he forced out.

Thor inclined his head. “I know it is not the answer you hoped for.”

“I’ll be all right,” Steve said, and turned to leave before Thor could see how untrue that was.

* * *

He had options. The thought had seemed a comforting one not a day before, when he’d idly pondered it. He couldn’t be Captain America anymore but he had options.

If not with Stark, then plenty of holes had been left by SHIELD. There had to be something he could still offer to his friends who would keep on fighting. It had been him, after all, who had figured out how to defeat the sorcerers. He wasn’t useless.

Lying on his bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, the thought passed through his mind easily before returning and making him blink.

He wasn’t useless.

That had been his greatest fear when he’d been made small again. But if not for him… his friends probably wouldn’t have even survived. Small as he was, he wasn’t useless.

 With that, a knot in his chest seemed to loosen, if only slightly. He didn’t know what he was going to do in this brave new world without the serum to give him a purpose. But he would find something, and be useful, and serum or not—it was going to be okay.

He closed his eyes and slept.

* * *

 Steve awoke the next morning to a couple of strange sensations. First, the whistle in his chest that had been ever-present for the past two weeks was gone. His ribs didn’t hurt at all. He was lying half off the bed, as though it had shrunk—or he had grown.

He sat up in bed, eyes widening as he realized what had happened. He stared down at himself, taking in the impressive musculature and _height_ that defined his post-serum body. A giddy feeling swept through him. For all he’d been okay with remaining small and sickly and finding something to do that didn’t involve donning his starts and stripes… this was much, much better.

His phone was blinking, telling him that he had a text from Banner, and he swiped it open without thinking.

  _Tested your blood again. Looks like I might have been wrong_.

Steve grinned at the phone, then set it down, stretching his newly-repaired body. Being small again had been a nice break—allowed him to catch up on all the things he hadn’t had time for before. But the break was over.

It was time to be Captain America again.


End file.
